Category: books

writing

Posted on by jessamyn

As most of you know, I’m working on a book. As many of you likely don’t know, I can be a terrible procrastinator though I tend to deliver content on time if I can (my deadline’s been extended til June). So I’m spending the next few months being a perfectionist, noodling with Scrivener, and talking to my computer about the digital divide and how libraries and librarians can help people cross it. I may send out some queries for some personal feedback and/or anecdotes at some point.

In the meantime I’ll be reading offline more, writing here less, and not travelling out of state again for work until summertime. Thanks to the wonders of RSS, you’ll know when I’m adding more content here [and I’ve added my twitterstream to the sidebar] but I sadly won’t be heading to Computers in Libraries. Hope it’s fun.

possibly the best library hoax

Posted on by jessamyn

“Jean Nepomucene Auguste Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, was a man with a singular passion. He collected books of which only one copy was known to exist…. [W]hen he died on September 1, 1839 he possessed only fifty-two books, but each of them was absolutely unique. His heir, not sharing the old man’s passion for book collecting, arranged for an auction to sell off the library”

Compelling no? The auction really happened, the rest of it is made up, the creation of a local antiquarian, having a bit of a practical joke. Read more at blacksundae, or see the auction catalog, itself a rarity, on Google Books.

the book/ebook divide

Posted on by jessamyn

As librarians, we don’t tell people what you’re reading. If you have a commercially produced ebook reader and you read purchased ebooks, people know what you’re reading. EFF has put together a very useful E-Book Buyer’s Guide to Privacy as a follow-up to their earlier blog post about ebook privacy. There are options, of course. As librarians, my personal opinions is that we should be taking this stuff very very seriously.

2009 reading list, a year end summary

Posted on by jessamyn

I skipped doing this last year because I was sort of embarrassed at the shortness of my list. I vowed to read more this year and I guess I did. Here are previous year end lists: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004. As you probably know, my booklist lives in a separate blog and it has its own RSS feed. I’m not a voracious reader and I’ve been heavy into genre fiction this year, but here’s the wrap-up of what I read in 2009.

number of books read in 2009: 39
number of books read in 2008: 31
number of books read in 2007: 53
number of books read in 2005: 86
number of books read in 2004: 103
number of books read in 2003: 75
number of books read in 2002: 91
number of books read in 2001: 78

average read per month: 3.25
average read per week: .75
number read in worst month: 0 (November)
number read in best month: 7 (February)
percentage by male authors: 82
percentage by female authors: 18
fiction as percentage of total: 51
non-fiction as percentage of total: 49
percentage of total liked: 81
percentage of total ambivalent: 6
percentage of total disliked: 3

So… I’m still doing pretty poorly reading books by female authors though I’ve been balancing fiction and non-fiction pretty well. I loved a few books I read this year, specifically the book about the WPA writer’s project by Kurlansky and the fiction book by Howard Frank Mosher that was set in Vermont. Now that the bus to MA has wifi and I have an EVDO card for my laptop, I read less when I’m in transit. Now that I play scrabble most evenings with my boyfriend 9and also, that I have a boyfriend at all) I red less at night. I haven’t gone over to ebooks in any way though I bet I’m reading the same amount of words, but less of them are in book format.

I have a few books that I got mostly through in 2009 that I’m sure I’ll finish off in 2010. I also have a bedside table for books now that I didn’t have before. Wish me luck, and happy reading in 2010!